The autonomization of police as a political force constitutes police fraternal organizations as an armed and organized ‘party’ in the sense that Marx would have recognized in the revolutions of 1848-1850 and 1871. Constituted as such, they actively and often ostentatiously present themselves as a potentially insurrectionary element that can act independently of municipal control.
Police actions to repress the 2020 George Floyd uprising were aptly described as ‘police riots’, politically staging their supremacy over elected government and their open indifference to popular demands that police power be subject to limits.
In spite of a handful of meagre concessions to these demands and policies that nominally imposed certain guardrails on police powers, these policies often lack any enforcement mechanism and are brazenly skirted by departments. On the rare occasions that they are caught, rather than imposing more severe penalties, the responsible parties will simply resign or go into early retirement.
While the political/administrative, public-facing stratum of the police played their assigned role of being outwardly sensitive to public concerns, beneath the smokescreen of skillful public relations, rank-and-file police never ceased nurturing a culture of impugnity and disdain for the communities they supposedly serve. The ‘reforms’ imposed by the uprising of 2020 have been composted into a fertilizer that fuels the resentment and fragility that is practically universal among police officers.
Since Trump’s re-election and the spectacle presented by ICE, these tendencies have been actively encouraged.
In all sorts of encounters, even the most quotidian and banal traffic stops, officers issue confusing and contradictory commands while expecting automatic compliance with instructions. They do this purposely to grant themselves permission to make use of outrageous force, and relish each and every opportunity to brutalize and torture the public.
Abolition is not a demand that stems from ‘one-upsmanship’ or left-wing phrasemongering. It is a minimum program that calls for actively dismantling the police. But, this is
not principally aimed at dismantling the police as a ‘public power’ in which the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of violence is invested. In this guise, the abolition demand would simply re-state the imperative to ‘smash the state’ and overthrow bourgeois supremacy.
What is much more urgent is the abolition of the police as an autonomous political agent, as an organized, armed, trained, and disciplined force that is increasingly independent from the state itself, or, having placed itself ‘above the state’ has replaced the political state apparatus with its own, which is another way of describing a process of *becoming the state*.
Now we know why Peter Thiel packed his bags for Argentina.
Milei just submitted his AI legislative framework to Congress, where he proposes:
- zero regulation on AI development,
- a brand-new "non-human corporation" category for AI/robot-operated entities with limited liability
-a low-tax regime with flexible governance rules.
The Dutch East India Company gave the world the limited liability company in 1602. Milei wants Argentina to do the same for autonomous AI agents in 2026.
@FT Yeah, but just like everything else, wait for the revision. And the fact that these are probably shit summer jobs opening up. Or people having to find second, third jobs. Etc.
@DaveyBoy1014@ProudSocialist middle class is essentially a consumption category not a description of someones relationship to the means of production. it's about working class and parasite class. if you have to work two jobs to survive, you're who we're fighting for too.
@RealDarkKitteee@ProudSocialist if you think those are great systems, feel free to move to where *checks notes* they have a higher standard of living than most Americans, besides the countries that are under literal illegal unilateral sanctions, but wait - even those too thrive! if you love your system so much