Origins of Police -- Protecting and Serving the Masters of Society
The liberal way of viewing the problem rests on a misunderstanding of the origins of the police.
By Sam Mitriani / Indypendent, Labor and Working-Class History Association Blog
February 2, 2015
アメリカでは、警察は国民に奉仕するものとリベラルは想定しているが、もともと 警察は、南部では、奴隷の取り締まり、北部では、外国人賃金労働者の取り締まりのために発生したものであって、資本家富裕層のためにあったものである、と。
いまも、それほど変わらないのでは、と。
大規模な抗議運動が大事、みたいな。
マルクス主義系統の本を若い頃読んでいたころには、この手の、支配階級が官憲も支配し、云々という記述はよくみかけたように思ったが、日本では最近はどうなっているんでしょうね。
The liberal way of viewing the problem rests on a misunderstanding of the origins of the police.
By Sam Mitriani / Indypendent, Labor and Working-Class History Association Blog
February 2, 2015
In most of the liberal discussions of the recent police killings of unarmed black men, there is an underlying assumption that the police are supposed to protect and serve the population. That is, after all, what they were created to do. Maybe there are a few bad apples, but if only the police weren’t so racist, or didn’t carry out policies like stop-and-frisk, or weren’t so afraid of black people, or shot fewer unarmed men, they could function as a useful service that we all need.
This liberal way of viewing the problem rests on a misunderstanding of the origins of the police and what they were created to do. The police were not created to protect and serve the population. They were not created to stop crime, at least not as most people understand it. And they were certainly not created to promote justice. They were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid- to late-19th century from the threat posed by that system’s offspring, the working class.
Before the 19th century, there were no police forces that we would recognize as such anywhere in the world. In the northern United States, there was a system of elected constables and sheriffs, much more responsible to the population in a very direct way than the police are today. In the South, the closest thing to a police force was the slave patrols. Then, as Northern cities grew and filled with mostly immigrant wage workers who were physically and socially separated from the ruling class, the wealthy elite who ran the various municipal governments hired hundreds and then thousands of armed men to impose order on the new working-class neighborhoods.
アメリカでは、警察は国民に奉仕するものとリベラルは想定しているが、もともと 警察は、南部では、奴隷の取り締まり、北部では、外国人賃金労働者の取り締まりのために発生したものであって、資本家富裕層のためにあったものである、と。
いまも、それほど変わらないのでは、と。
大規模な抗議運動が大事、みたいな。
マルクス主義系統の本を若い頃読んでいたころには、この手の、支配階級が官憲も支配し、云々という記述はよくみかけたように思ったが、日本では最近はどうなっているんでしょうね。
