[Marxism] Prison guards (was: Police unions etc.)

[Jscotlive at aol.com]

I started the thread with this particular subject
line, and my point  (see below) was not about police
officers or soldiers, but prison guards. It  is cruelly
misguided (and doctrinaire) for Marxists to demonize
those in  this degrading, low-wage occupation. To end
up in it one need accept no  "goals" other than to put
food on the table and a roof over it. Lots of  people
work for the State, and all wage labor functions to
serve the  interests of Capital.  

Reply:
 
It is also doctrinaire not to differentiate between a low wage occupation  
that doesn't involve repressing the poor and the working class on behalf of the  
ruling class, consciously or unconsciously, and one that does. Putting food 
on  the table as an excuse for police officers and prison guards sounds eerily  
reminiscent of the excuse offered by Nazi concentration camp guards at the 
end  of the Second World War that they were only obeying orders.
 
It is not so much the individual in the role of police officer or prison  
guard that Marxists have a problem with, it is the role that the individual in  
those positions play in society.
 
Relationship to the means of production determines nothing in terms of  
social change. It is consciousness of that relationship, identification  with that 
relationship, that matters.
 
J