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cops are not workers (quokk.au)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/mop
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A meme featuring a crying police officer saying, "We are workers too! Have solidarity!" countered by a character with blue hair stating, "Cops are not workers. Unlike a worker, a cop breaking up a strike is not producing value for the capitalist class. Instead, cops are enforcing the structures of labor production themselves. This is a vastly different relationship of production than that of workers."
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[–] 16 points 7 months ago (7 children)

"a cop breaking up a strike is not producing value for the capitalist class"?

Is there a typo here? Seems to me like that's exactly what they're doing.

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    When I clock in at work, my labor directly generates profit - I do a task, company gets money for it.

    A cop breaking up a strike is defending the system. The cop is not directly employed by a private parent company (usually). Unless the company is being directly paid by a customer, directly for this cop’s action, and the cop is directly paid a wage by said company, the relationship is different.

    There is parallel benefit between cops and capitalists, but one does not have direct authority over the other.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Wording here is terrible. But in the end so is the message. This is some tanki slop

    The cops are workers in the sense that they are disenfranchised from benefiting from the use of their time. To say that they do not create value in the same way a wage worker does befuddles the damning reality of the laborers loss in benefiting from the value they have created.

    Cops absolutely create value to a capital society. Just not to the working class. But they damn sure don't benefit from the value they have created.

    Also, fuck the police.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    That's not true, cops are the physical enforcers of the laws written by politicians sold to the capital system and, as such, they tend to profit from the value stolen from the working class in benefit and salaries which are always paid during difficult times. You could see that during the pandemic, when doctors and nurses had their pays suspended but police forces did not missed a single month of pay. Furthermore defense spending is (for most of contemporary states) one of the few budget voices always rising and never shrinking. Cops are scum and I don't intend to see scum as a fellow worker. If you disagree with me answer this question: would you prefer to sit at a table with a firefighter or a cop? If the answer is a firefighter ask yourself why and then come back to this post

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Absolutely. We don't need to do mental gymnastics to make reality fit with Marxian nonsense. It's completely possible to have different factions of workers with different interests in the real world. Cops are just one example, but there are others, albeit the conflicts tend to be more narrow.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    not in a Marxist sens. Classical marxists analyze work in order to make the workers the liberation class. Those definition to got some value that workers could take from capitalists.

    In that sens, cops are needed for the expropriation of value from workers, not the production of value. So workers could keep this value for themselves if they have no cops.

    This definition is operational in a lot of work situation, however it do have some flaws. As pointed out, it's mean that workers in the public sector to do not suffer from exploitation, that reproductive work is not work, or informal work (like drug dealing or sex work) is not work too. This last example show what those flaws let class disdain could hijack it.

    I see 3 possibilities :

    • this definition is true, but incomplete
    • this definition is tree, but their is other form of work we have to take in consideration (maybe boss exploitation is not the same than domestic exploitation)
    • this definition is wrong
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