Even non-capitalist regimes, grounded in coercion of labot, cannot survive when _only_ force remains. Barbara Jeanne Field nicely remarks, "When only force remains, nothing remains."
The role of direct force in maintaining U.S. capitalism is the crucial role it plays in maintaining racism. Without the war on drugs/crime and the war against illegal aliens, the brutal repression of black and brown communities which provides the ongoing material grounds for racism, racism would become a much weaker ideological force, with the results that the conditions of _all_ workers _as_ workers would become more visible and more widely recognized. That sentence is too fucking long, but I'm not going to try nwo to revise it.
Carrol
^^^^^^^ CB; I'm wondering about the importance of police as protecting private property and scabs in strikes ? Enforcement of ownership of means of production in general by courts with the police providing the muscle ?