Racist violence and police murder are inherent to capitalism. It will be around until we get rid of capitalism. Knowing this is also key to finding short term ways that we can collectively get some semblance of more immediate reprisal 4 these injustices Follow me for a second
You cannot have full employment under Capitalism. Capitalism must have a certain percentage of unemployed ppl to exist. When unemployment rates lower past a certain point- u see WSJournal, FTimes, etc worry because it means that wages go up- &stock values go down- in real time
There must be an army of unemployed workers so that bosses can keep wages low by threatening workers with the idea of being replaced. The bigger that army is- the workers supposed "competition"- the lower the wages are. And the point is to keep wages as low as they can
If there was full employment, workers could tell the boss "I want $75 an hour or I'm out" and the boss couldnt replace them. Theyd have to give in to demands of workers without much organizing needed Businesses must make more money each year than the last- so this wouldnt work.
So, Capitalism needs an army of unemployed workers in order to exist. What do you call an army of unemployed workers? You call them hungry. They need to eat. And they don't have a job, because Capitalism needs them to be unemployed and desperate.
That army of unemployed workers isn't going to just let themselves or their families starve and be homeless. They are going to go into illegal business. Hell- even many folks with legal jobs that don't pay enough will need to do this for supplemental income.
All business- legal and illegal- uses violence to regulate itself If a hotel next2 offices of Twitter decided to make a golf course thru twitter offices, @Jack wld say "no, I have a deed" The deed only matters cuz there are men w guns- the police- who will physically enforce it
During prohibition, when liquor was illegal U rob the liquor dude- gangsters come after u U rob the liquor dude now- the police come after u 20 yrs ago when weed was illegal U rob the weed dude- his friends come after u Now u rob the weed dude- the police come after u Same shit
illegal business doesn't have the police or the courts on to regulate it like legal business does. "You can't go to court and say "your honor, I was supposed to be buying a whole kilo of cocaine- clearly this is half baking soda. I demand restitution!"
There's no zoning board to complain to "This block is only zoned for one cocaine vendor, if this guy wants to vend cocaine in the same area, he's gonna have to get a special permit. That is, unless he can agree to stick to vending heroin."
So illegal business practitioners have to regulate business themselves. As you see with police and legal business- regulating business takes physical force and violence. You can't have business without violence.
You can't have business w/o violence, and you can't have unemployment w/o illegal business, and you can't have capitalism without unemployment. Therefore, you can't have capitalism without poverty, unemployment, so-called "crime", and violence.
But- how does the ruling class tell the whole working class- who, in the US, is largely White- that their poverty and low wages is something that is built into the economic system? That the wealth of the Bezoses and Bloombergs of the world RELY on their poverty? They don't.
They teach the working class- thru media conglomerates they own (news & entertainment)- that low wages, poverty, and violence that grows out of that is is due to the bad decisions of the impoverished. That the poverty they experience is something that can be fixed by unlearning
(the Bezoses and Bloombergs of the world don't have to personally edit or produce it to put this out- they just hire the editors and writers who don't challenge this view. Not hard- many of them come from similar backgrounds and/or training/education and therefore political view)
But how do the GET AWAY with telling the WHOLE working class that their low wages and poverty is built in to capitalism- without the working class deciding to get rid of the ruling class? They don't.
They point to Black people and other people of color and say to the white working class: "look at those savages. Theyre violent, their culture is lacking what they need to thrive in this system, they don't work hard, they have a weaker family structure than white ppl, etc etc"
"that is poverty- and Black people and other POC are in poverty because of their own doing, when in actuality capitalism works fine and is where you can get RICH if you do it right" "here watch CSI:Bumfuck, it'll prove it to you"
They bolster the lie: "Black neighborhoods have more crime and violence than White neighborhoods" Only if u lump the Bel Airs in w White working class Studies show: if u compare Black communities to white communities of the SAME INCOME LEVEL, crime & violence levels r the same
(check out the article I wrote for the guardian in 2015 for the links on a couple of those studies)
And that way they get the white working class to say "I'm not like them at all- I'm morally upstanding. If I do have some financial problems, it's cause of the couple little adjustments I need to make. Not the economic system. At least I'm not them."
and that's when you get white ppl in families who make $22k a year calling themselves MIDDLE CLASS and aligning themselves w the ruling class. And this is not just Trump supporters. Look at Elon Musk's twitter and you'll find a gang of ppl kissing his ass, many w very little $
But now that poverty and the "crime" and violence that comes from it has been defined as a personal problem, and furthermore- racistly defined as one derived from the culture of the community that it is supposedly happening in more- What is the role of the police?
If police are supposed to actually want to "fight crime", then they would go to the source of the "crime". This would be the ruling class. This would be the billionaires who cause the low wages and poverty and "crime" that, as I show above, is necessitated by their actions.
We've seen enough CSI:Bumfucks to know that they are always supposedly going for the guy at the top. the guy that is the ringleader of said crime. If cops were in it to stop "crime" and the violence that comes from it, they wldn't be cops, they would be revolutionary organizers
Because the source of the crime isn’t in the Black communities other POC communities, or even White working class communities- the source of the crime is on 5th ave, in Bel Air, and silicon valley.
But, since the racist ideas about Black people and other POC- as I laid out above- are necessitated by capitalism, the job of the police in the Black community is functionally one of a combatant against the community.
It doesn’t matter, how nice the cop is in their personal life, or what basketball team they coach on the weekend, or even what their conscious intentions are-
the job of police is simply- at best- to lock up folks for being involved in their own survival in an economic system that dictates- and thrives off the fact- they are in poverty.
And their ARE other crimes that aren’t directly to do with a direct crime of economic survival, but even many of those are the outgrowth of the culture that comes from whatever the local industry is. Fishing villages sing fishing songs.
The only way for cops to feel like they are doing the right thing- the only way for them to function in their job- is for them to subscribe to racist notions of violence, crime, and poverty- even if the cop themselves is Black or POC.
If want to stop these things, we have to get rid of capitalism. A mvmnt that understands that also understands where our power lies.
If we want short term justice for murders like George Floyd’s murder and the other ones that are going to come up, a reform- we are going to have to shut cities down. Strikes. with clear demands in relation to this.
General strikes until they not only arrest the other cops, but put someone on as prosecutor that we trust to actually prosecute. Like a DA that went in there to disrupt, like Philly’s Larry Krasner or SF’s Chesa Boudin.
Again- this won't fix the situation- but if we want to show what we can do, show that there is a cost to these murders. Then that's what will have to happen.
And it's something that everybody can take part in if you are working right now. But it has to be organized, and there are probably ways to figure out which industires a strike would be most effective in.
