Doug Henwood commenting on David Graeber says, "The repressive power of the state and the consciousness of the masses are problems." In a later post, he says that he has argued with Graeber about whether their is now a new level of police repression. A look at U.S. history tells us that police (broadly conceived to encompass all areas of the state's police power) has been brutally used in the past to an extent most would consider much greater than today. The army, the national guard, local police (often all in league with private police and armies) broke strikes routinely and with impunity for decades. Consider the Great Uprising or the Memorial Day massacre. The same kind of murderous repression and more was visited upon black people. What is different comparing today and then is mass consciousness, as Doug says. Then there was more of it. The police have greater firepower today, for certain. But they don't have to use it. At the Ludlow Massacre, the militia and private deputies burned women and children to death. What level of consciousness would there have to be here now for that to happen? Or for the government to drop bombs people here as it did during the great West Virginia mine wars in the early 1920s? True the bombs today are more deadly. But the victims were dead then just the same. And the miners fought back. Would we?