Kate Hinchcliff wrote:
> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> >The less cops, prison guards, & soldiers we have, the better. The more
> >money spent on cops, prison guards, & armed forces, the less money we have
> >for schools, health care, etc. It's a zero-sum game. Moreover, the more
> >individuals have law enforcement jobs, the more likely the war on crime is
> >to continue, since organized cops, etc. lobby for tougher laws on crime &
> >less civil liberties. The general interest of the working class and the
> >particular interest of the armed agents of the state are inherently
> >contradictory.
>
> On this view the appropriate response is to push for the privatization of the state by calling for all of it to be run, basically, as a business.
How so?
> As much as feasibly possible, of course. Then you can claim nothing of the sort as you have above, a view which is astonishingly simplistic in its complete lack of analysis of the state other than to insist that it operates as some sort of monolithic, unidimensional leviathan.
Again, how so? A post can hardly provide what has been for around 100 years the most contested area of intra-marxist debate. But I should imagine it would be sort of a consensus that the armed power of the capitalist state is antagonistic of working-class interests. You seem to think that a whole theory of the state is promulgated in a paragraph that simply notes that the *expenses* of the state power flow from the same source as do the expenditures of government (a useful but messy distinction). The post office, unemployment, public health, education, et cetera are functions of government. (For one thing, note that while marxists posit the eventual withering away of the state, they posit a steady growth of what I call governmental functions.)
You could argue (probably correctly) that there is no reason in principle for governmental expenditures to increase merely because state powers decline. Yes, but of course were it working -class struggle that enforced such a reduction in state expenditures, that struggle would itself both generate and stem from a context in which the working class could also demand greater governmental services.
In any case, even if Yoshie's arguments are simplistic, your rebuttal such as it is seems equally simplistic.
>
> I guess I'll just take comfort in the consideration that a marxist revolutionary such as yourself, one who feels so emboldened as to make flat-footed anti-working class sentiments as above,
Huh? Please. Slow down. Take it a step at a time. You are jumbling a rather large number of issues helter-skelter together. How is criticism of that arm of the state responsible for (for example) the Republic Steel Massacre in East Chicago anti- working class.
> refuses to consort with the likes of the ranks of the working class who have guns.
How did this issue get involved?
> I am fairly certain that we are all safer and sleep more soundly knowing that marxist revolutionaries who espouse sentiments as above don't have or want to have access to guns.
Opinions re cops are quite independent of opinions re civilian access to guns. I have never heard the two questions yoked before.
>
> I fail to see how you can make a fast and clear distinction between security guards and cops with guns and DAs, PDs, parole officers, counselors, physicians, psychiatrists, Drug treatment
If you draw back a bit from point scoring, you would see that you have important questions re important distinctions to be made here.
I would argue, for example, that *in principle*, firefighters, social workers, and teachers are all employees of the government but *not* of the state. I would also freely not just admit but affirm strongly that to a very large extent these sectors of the working class function as agents of the state, sometimes willingly, sometimes unwillingly. Those younger than about 65 are apt to think of fire hoses only in respect to civil rights demonstrators, but when I was 15 fire hoses were being turned on strikers in my home town of Benton Harbor, Michigan. I have no idea as to whether either in Benton Harbor or Birmingham all the firefighters were enthusiastic about their tasks. Potentially, such workers could be won from their status as agents of state power. This would not be true in the case of police, prison guards, or DAs.
> programs operators and the like who also work for the state and perform the very same policing functions as the state and in far more insidious, hidden ways.
Yes, the world is complicated. And hard cases make for bad law. That is my distinction between state and government is a rough and ready distinction for purposes of political organizing. I have not the slightest idea off hand how Drug Program Operators should be classified, but I am quite sure that it is not useful or illuminating to organize the argument around such doubtful (hard) cases.
>
> On your account it would appear that there is no way in which unionization can be conceived of as political practice for, if it were, then surely you would want to unionize cops, etc. I guess practice does not shape consciousness after all.
Huh?
>
> Kate
>
> PS Do you honestly think that _any_ education will do as long as it's well-funded? Do you honestly think that the health care system does not police our behavior? And do you honestly think that that same health care system will always be better as long as it is better funded? If so, color me shocked.
Again, too many issues jumbled together. A working-class perspective on education *does*, however, *begin* with a demand for *more*. That is not enough, but it is certainly the context for everything else. Same with health care. Where does Yoshie say anything at all about anything "always be[ing] better" under any conditions.
You confuse the whole weight of capitalist society (e.g., health care system "policing our behavior") with the specific question of the state's exercise of direct force. Both questions are important -- and in fact the indirect policing is in the long run more important. But it is a utterly obscurantist to jumble the two issues together.
Carrol