Defund The Police - The New Liberal Groove
Written By: Bob Briton
With the advent of the protests around the murder of George Floyd in the US and the ongoing tragedy of Aboriginal deaths in custody here, the role of police is under the spotlight as never before. Protests erupted first in the United States of America, then spread across the world as the police reacted ironically with the same violent and repressive actions as those being protested against. With many experiencing or witnessing police brutality first hand, not only were the actions of the police in situations being questioned, but their role in society is coming into question.
In reaction to this many groups have popped up advocating for liberal reforms, while others have called for “Abolitionist” reforms. For example take the two campaigns based in the USA, the “8 can’t wait” and “8 to abolition” movements. The “8 can’t wait” campaign is advocating for 8 points of reform into the police force and the “8 to Abolition” movement seeks to enact “proposals (that) focus on concrete actions such as reducing police budgets, rather than introducing abstract procedural rules that are easily undercut by police"(1). They both miss the point and while appearing more radical, the “8 to Abolition” movement merely seeks to reform capitalism and socialise the accumulation of profits into other initiatives, basically a bit more of a radical social democratic position than the "8 can't wait movement".
A differing widespread belief is that the relationship of police to the most reactionary sections of the ruling class and the racist culture in police ranks put it beyond fundamental reform.
Communists agree. Beginning with Marx and elaborated in practice by the Bolsheviks, a core belief of Communists has been that the military and standing bodies of police are open to reactionary intrigue and very easily set themselves against the interests of the people. To the extent that it is practicable, these roles would be taken over by volunteer militias made up of citizens motivated by the interests of working people and the goal of a Socialist and Communist society.
This revolutionary change would take place as a result of a socialist revolution. But is it possible to make this radical switch to volunteer militias under conditions of capitalism with no other fundamental changes in social relations having taken place? Would it even be desirable?
“The behaviour of the courts and prisons systems has resisted efforts at reform, including numerous Royal Commissions in the Australian context”
It seems there is a range of opinion about what exactly the latest slogan of “defund the police” means. At the more liberal end of the group advocating this (the spokespersons appearing on late night chat shows in the US, for example) is a set of reforms to change the scope and nature of policing in societies like theirs. These include:
De-militarising police by reducing their budgets for buying war material
Reducing budgets as a punishment for misconduct and not investigating it
Re-directing funding to social services
Reducing police functions to simply policing (i.e. “wellness check” calls to 911 would be passed on to health services, not gun-wielding psychopaths)
These are just demands. To achieve them would require a mighty, concerted and militant campaign. Given the dominance of authoritarian capitalist class rule these reforms would be subject to subversion and reversal requiring even more struggle around the issues. That must be done until permanent progressive change can be made in a new society characterised by the state power of the working class.
There is, however, a portion of the movement calling for the defunding of police in the sense of abolishing the institution. This article is devoted to examining the value of this demand.
The call to “defund the police” (in the sense of disbanding it) is perfectly understandable. Their behaviour and the behaviour of the courts and prisons systems has resisted efforts at reform, including numerous Royal Commissions in the Australian context. Aboriginal deaths in custody and the removal of Aboriginal children from their families have not reduced in number since the release of findings and recommendations that received widespread support in the community and lip service in the bureaucracy.
In the current circumstances, calls from relatively small sections of the community to disband the police are arguably less likely to be heeded than the recommendations of a Royal Commission. But let’s say the movement unleashed by George Floyd’s murder and the call to scrap the police becomes so massive that this step is put on the table as an immediate prospect. Would it be a good thing and whose interests would that actually serve?, given that we still live in a capitalist society. What would follow such a measure, and would it be better than what we have now?
Background
Modern policing dates back to the reforms instituted by conservative British politician Robert Peel in the mid nineteenth century. What are now considered police functions were previously carried out by the military. The establishment of the police coincided with other reforms including the reduction of the use of the death penalty and the provision of education in prisons, i.e. to give them a reforming rather than purely punitive role. The police force would be drawn from the citizens of the country rather than have those functions carried out by career soldiers. It was said to be putting policing closer to the people.
“Their essential function is to secure capitalist class rule and its system of exploitation of the vast majority of the population”
We needn’t delude ourselves here about the sincerity or the thoroughgoing nature of Peel’s reforms. The police and prisons retained their roles as main pillars of the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state. Their essential function is to secure capitalist class rule and its system of exploitation of the vast majority of the population. However, the dual role of these institutions must be acknowledged. As well as ensuring that no challenge to the rule of capital arises or succeeds, they also have the task of controlling objectively anti-social behaviour.
As well as breaking up pickets, hounding trade unionists seeking to defend their members and crushing legitimate protest, they intervene when drunks take to the roads in their cars, attend fights in pubs and incidents of domestic violence. Their behaviour while carrying out those actions is often atrocious and is now the subject of public attention. Nevertheless, in the absence of another force in society responsible for these duties, who would do them? If a person was attacking your front door with an axe and threatening to kill you, you would still be well advised to call the police.
Of course, members of the community do intervene to stop anti-social behaviour. They talk down the drug-affected aggressor in a confrontation in the street. They remove a person from a home where the spouse is being violent. But, in many cases, at some point a trained professional with authority is required. The experience of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in the US city of Seattle may prove instructive, and every Communist would wish the experiment well, but it is hard to imagine how the questions already raised here would be answered if all the police forces in the US and Australia were disbanded.
The Problem With Police
The problem with police in carrying out their useful functions stems from their role in the class struggle. They internalise the authoritarian outlook of the class they serve and its attitude of “divide and rule” towards the population. Racism is, therefore, not a stand-alone problem that can be dealt with in isolation.
Another problem with maintaining standing bodies of police is that they interact with sections of the community making “easy money” out of human frailties. They deal with the lumpen elements controlling the drug trade, prostitution, the smuggling of untaxed alcohol and tobacco, gambling, and so on. The fortunes made out of these trades inevitably leads to further police corruption. Organised crime could not exist to the extent it does without this factor.
“The idea that police, alone, create the problems experienced by workers is unsustainable”
A further problem is that while police forces can exacerbate crime, capitalism works to create it. Drug and alcohol abuse, prostitution and the crimes that arise from capitalist generated racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. would diminish and eventually cease to exist in a socialist society. People are often drawn into crime because they have so few options to survive. If people had a useful function in society, very few of them would consider prostitution, drug trafficking, getting wasted on intoxicants and attacking their neighbours as attractive options.
Contrarywise, reductions in the number of opportunities for people to survive push more and more of us to consider alternatives. Lack of jobs, tightening restrictions for welfare payments and less access to housing will increase the level of anti-social behaviour. The only way to remove the need for police, prisons and a huge system of courts is to meet the fundamental needs of people. This won’t happen under capitalism. That system doesn’t work without the terror that unemployment and homelessness hold out.
Defund The Police – A Capitalist Slogan?
Milton Friedman was a modern proponent of raw, unrestrained capitalism. Like US author Ayn Rand, he believed the only role the state should carry on is defence of national borders and the upholding of contracts entered into by people trading in an unregulated market. His ideas (or, rather, those of the ruling class at this stage of the class struggle) were trialled in Pinochet’s Chile and then rolled out across the globe.
Friedman visited Australia in 1975 and addressed the National Press Club in Canberra. A journalist, seeing an opportunity to spoil Friedman’s super-capitalist pitch, asked if the military should be privatised. The Chicago-based economist didn’t miss a beat. “Why not?”, he replied.
The previously laughable idea of privatising core roles of governments such as the military to essentially unaccountable corporations has gradually come to dominate. Many prisons are now privately run and are creating a “prisons/industrial complex” in the US. This trend is strengthening in Australia, too. The experience of inmates in privatised prisons is worse than in their government-run counterparts. This is of no concern to the ruling class. If it is not ridiculous to privatise prisons and run them for profit, it is not so ridiculous to consider it for policing. The combination of private prisons and private policing is a truly terrifying prospect.
Corporate security companies would see an opportunity to massively expand their functions if the current police bureaucracy were to be scuttled. Safely assuming theft and aggressive behaviour were to persist after the police were disbanded, these companies would seize the chance to take on the role of controlling it. It is also safe to assume that the swelling ranks of private security guards would be joined by former police officers. The current behaviour of security personnel is also questionable and controversial.
“They often make problems worse but suggesting their abolition would deliver peaceful communities is to suggest capitalism is an otherwise functional society”
This is a “reform” that the capitalist class already has in mind. Corporations would have even less oversight from pesky legislators in enforcing class rule with an iron fist. If the increasingly militarised police forces were placed in the trusty hands of members of the capitalist class and not under the direction of their sometimes-unreliable servants in parliament, capitalist rule would be enforced with even greater vigour.
“But that’s not what we want at all”, would be the response of the proponents of defunding the police. “If there were no police, we wouldn’t have any problems. Communities can police themselves.” The idea that police, alone, create the problems experienced by workers is unsustainable. They often make problems worse but suggesting their abolition would deliver peaceful communities is to suggest capitalism is an otherwise functional society. Given the size of the problems created by that system, it is naïve to think bodies of civic-minded volunteers can deal with them.
More History
The US is currently the centre of the debates surrounding the role of police. Like Australia, incidents regularly take place that give rise to justified anger and the consideration of what to do to defend the community from the violent behaviour of police. The Black Panther Party of the US was drawn from the most marginalised of the African American population. Their famous and widely endorsed ten-point program from the 1970s has the following demands:
7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people.
8. We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.
9. We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black Communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.
10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.
You will notice they did not call for the abolition of the police. They demanded that they change their current activities harassing, brutalising and killing the black populations of US cities. Police in the US had and have scant interest in maintaining peace in African American communities. They act out the racism institutionalised in US society and are happy to see black people consigned to hellish realms. The Black Panther Party insisted if police would not undertake their declared function, that they should be driven out of African American communities.
“Struggling against police brutality was an intrinsic part of the struggle for socialism, this element is missing from the current struggle”
The demand to release black prisoners and, presumably, reform them while living in the community is gaining ground in the US and in Australia where Aboriginal people are massively over-represented in the country’s jails. The situation in juvenile detention is even worse where detention is resorted to for Aboriginal offenders almost exclusively. Trial by peers from the African American community (and by Aboriginal jurors in the Australian context) is also a feasible demand.
These demands of the Panthers were inextricably linked to the demands for land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. As Marxist-Leninists, the Panthers knew that all of these calls could only be met when capitalism was replaced by socialism through a revolution carried out by and in the interests of the whole working class of the US. Struggling against police brutality was an intrinsic part of the struggle for socialism. This element is missing from the current struggle.
The people need to remain mobilised and vigilant against brutality in prisons and among police. Budgets for police certainly need trimming and their armoury of military equipment including deadly and maiming “crowd control” technology scrapped. But the call to “defund the police” or to essentially disband those agencies is not a progressive, immediate demand if it is unhitched from the struggle for socialism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1) https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ep4xy7/what-does-defund-and-abolish-the-police-mean (accessed at 12:00pm, 23/7/20)