Police Officers Are Not Workers
Can police be part of the struggle against capitalism? Should the left fight for a better police or for the abolition of the police? This text is my attempt to answer these questions from an anarchist point of view. In "Anarchy Works," Peter Gelderloos argues that, instead of the common notion that we need police to fight crime, crime exists because the police exist. The role of the police is to protect private property and suppress resistance movements or dissent. In an anarchist society, security would be provided by the community itself, without the need for a specialized class. The existence of the police is contradictory because its function was never to protect us, but to control us and protect private property. The state cannot protect us from police abuses, while at the same time, the police cannot protect us from crimes committed by the state. The police are part of the state. If the state protects us from itself, who will protect us from the state? The p...
