There is a German TV show called “Auf Streife” which translates to “on patrol”.
It follows police men and women as they do their jobs.
Of course it’s all actors but they say the episodes are based on real events which doesn’t
mean anything.
The police do lots of things from arresting someone, to stopping kids who are vandalising
a building and all manners of different situations that come with being the one to enforce the
law.
And after watching too much of that show I felt really sympathetic to the police on screen.
For some time, about 4 years ago, I even considered working for the police as an alternative to
my career in the heavy industry, of course now I spend my time making YouTube videos
instead of having a real job.
Clearly I supported the police back then if I even considered joining them.
So what happened in the past 4 years that I will now publicly say that all cops are
bad.
I will use the word “bad” instead of “bastard” because it’s not as harsh.
If you are watching this you may be a leftist in which case you already know the answer,
you can stick around and tell me what I got wrong.
But you may not be a leftist.
You may be a liberal, a conservative, or … worse.
But no matter which one of those you are, I think you will agree that some cops are
bad.
Excessive force and abuse are the main reasons.
For example the cop who killed George Floyd.
Or any of the other uncountable cases of police shooting unarmed black people.
So I would say we can agree that some cops are bad.
Right?
Individuals can be bad people even if they happened to be cops.
But how does “some cops are bad” become “*all* cops are bad”?
Clearly we cannot generalise like that just because a portion of the cops are bad.
There are two main approaches to this question.
There is the anarchist answer and the Marxist answer.
Let’s start with anarchism.
As you may or may not know anarchism as an ideology is all about power and who has it.
And the anarchists wish to generally form a society in which nobody can control others.
They want to abolish all unjust hierarchy.
To them you cannot let someone politically represent you, just like you can’t sign
yourself into slavery.
Because of this, no society that exists right now is anarchist.
There are different ways to define the state.
The anarchist view is that a state is a tool of one class to oppress and rule over another.
Of course, there are dictatorships but they also consider democracies to be oppressive.
The logic goes that a representative, even when trying to genuinely represent their group,
they still have different incentives than the people themselves.
Therefore no matter how democratic your state is, using the anarchist framework it is still
inherently oppressive because the ruling class is inherently separate from the mass of the
people.
For anarchists only a form of governance in which people directly take part in is acceptable.
This means there can be a local government, it just needs to be made up of everyone it
governs.
Absolute democracy.
This way you have the most freedom and no political class with separate incentives.
This has been shown to work in many communes and cooperative businesses.
The main criticism is that without a central government a region governed like this would
likely be invaded by other states.
Governments govern via laws.
And the people living under that government follow the laws.
There can be different reasons for that, maybe you genuinely believe that a law is good.
For example I believe killing is bad, so I will oppose killing because I feel that way,
not because it’s against the law.
But of course, the main reason people don’t break the law is because if you do it, the
police will come and make you follow the law.
And if you don’t then you will be fined or arrested.
In effect the power of the state comes through the police.
Without police, laws would only be words.
And parliaments would only be people meeting.
So the anarchist view is that we have this state in which a political class is oppressing
the majority and they are only able to do it because they have the support of the police.
If the police stopped listening to the ruling class then the state would effectively seize
to exist, and we would be more free.
So the anarchist take on why all cops are bad is that they chose to do a job that ends
up supporting the oppression of the people.
So it’s not that they are individually bad people, they may be lovely and I am sure they
have families who love them, but the fact of the matter is that the institution they
are a part of is harmful for humanity.
Now you may object to this and say that it’s impossible to have a society without police.
And that is a strong criticism, after all abolishing the police seems like a very drastic
step to take, why not reform it?
Well, for most of humanity there was no police.
It was invented in the 18 hundreds specifically to centralise power for the government.
How did law enforcement work back then?
Well, you would have a sheriff who was responsible for the law enforcement of a particular region,
and if needed he could gather up people to form a search party or a militia to take care
of someone who broke the law.
This sheriff could be elected.
This goes hand in hand with anarchists wanting to arm everyone so everyone can protect themselves
and their personal property.
This system isn’t perfect and there are other ways to do this which don’t give one
individual that much power.
Like with a police council, or a neighbourhood watch.
I just wanted to explain one possible alternative system, so I don’t just say how things are
bad, but also how they could be better.
Back then if there was unrest a central government could send the army to take control of an
area.
The English king placing his army in Boston was the trigger for the American war of independence.
Of course there are laws which, without police, people may not follow, like for example speeding,
jaywalking or taking drugs.
But I’d invite you to consider that maybe being arrested for jaywalking would be kind
of unnecessary.
Like, why is jaywalking against the law at all?
As long as people take care I don’t think that ban should exist.
So, to sum up the anarchist position.
The police is bad because it enables a political class to rule the mass of the people without
their consent.
Let us now turn to the Marxist answer.
I have explained this before but basically Marxism it an ideology which lets us understand
the world around us by analysing conflicts and the ways they could play out.
I will skip over how we get to this point and just tell you that the most important
conflict in society is the class conflict between the capitalists and the workers.
The main difference is that the capitalists make money by having money and investing it,
and the workers make money by working, and because they lack capital they need to work
for a capitalist.
And that capitalist makes a profit by paying the workers a bit less than they produced,
otherwise they would not make a profit with their business and they would have to get
a job.
The same is true for landlords, they make money just by owning a flat and making people
who do real work pay for them.
You can understand this class conflict as two different forces trying to change the
economy.
The workers want higher pay and less work and the capitalists want to pay them little
and make them work a lot.
And the landlord wants high property prices while the tenants want the opposite.
This is a conflict because it’s impossible to please both sides, one must lose for the
other one to win.
There are 3 ways this class conflict can end, it could stay this way forever and the conflict
is never resolved, the capitalists change the system into one that is more profitable
for them like fascism or neo feudalism, or the workers remove the capitalists and take
the machines for themselves which is socialism.
Remember that the only reason the capitalist gets to take some of the value the workers
produced is because they own the capital aka the machines, aka the means of production.
If the workers took these machines, then they could democratically decide what to do with
the profit themselves, allowing greater liberty for the masses, and less liberty for the one
%. From now on I will assume that capitalism
is inherently bad because of the power dynamic and one-sided exploitation.
If you disagree with this, I have other videos going into the issues of capitalism so I won’t
repeat myself here.
But wait, if it would be so easy to just take the means of production and stop being exploited,
why don’t workers just do it?
Why don’t they just take the property of the capitalist?
Why allow the capitalist to take a part of what you produce just because he has a piece
of paper that says the machine is his.
How is that just?
Well, it’s not.
And the simple reason why it’s possible for a single person to control a business
that affects thousands is because of the state.
Because the state decided that it’s possible for individuals to own the means of production,
despite that reducing the freedom of everyone but the capitalists.
And how does the state protect private capital?
Using the police of course.
So you could say that the whole reason capitalism is still around, and the whole reasons all
issues of capitalism aren’t solved is because the police is preventing it.
If you and your comrades try to take over your workplace to establish democracy, the
police will show up and throw tear gas at you.
And of course, the police aren’t capitalists, you don’t see Donald trump in riot gear
protecting his tower.
It’s members of the working class, people without capital who do the work to defend
capital.
This is why the police is often called “class traitors”.
Because in the class conflict, they are betraying their class.
So, the Marxist reason why all cops are bad is because they are the only thing standing
between us and reaching socialism.
The same applies to the army of course but this video isn’t about them.
So the reason cops are bad is not because they are individually bad people but because
their job is one which causes millions of people to suffer the effects of capitalism.
I’ve not gone into the crimes of capitalism or why I think it’s bad because I have separate
videos on that which you can watch.
Other than that I’d like to say thanks to everyone who supports me on patreon.
Lately my views have been going down and it was kinda depressing so it’s nice to have
this financial incentive to continue working.
Also, check the bottom of the description, there is a discord invite link for 5 people
there which leads to my patreon discord.
There will be one for every video from now on so hit the bell or something.
Because this is a short video there is no patreon name reading but I still love you
all.