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

[Marvin Gandall]

Mark Lause wrote:

[...]

> What shapes the possibilities and options a student has?  In part, it
> might
> be because they had teachers early on who tried to help by giving them
> higher grades than they actually earned because those teachers realized
> that
> social conditions denied some students a chance to earn a decent grade as
> easily as other students from more privileged background.  Or maybe those
> teachers gave these students bluntly honest grades rather than to cheat
> the
> hard-working students who actually did learn how to earn a better grade.

[...]
===========================================
Moreover, job choice is mostly involuntary, a function of economic coercion.
If the major employer in your area is the local prison or they are hiring
cops while laying off factory workers, what choice do you have? Most people,
except the most highly skilled and priviliged, have very little; they go to
where the jobs are, including to the police and the military, or they stay
unemployed. I think most people understand this, even in poor and minority
communities where the cops are often a malign presence, where these
communities want to reform how policing is done rather than get rid of the
police altogether, as Sayan has pointed out.

The police unions defend interests and espouse policies which are often
reactionary, but so do other unions on the issues which concern them. The
appropriate response in all cases is not to support or remain indifferent to
the prohibition or dissolution of such unions, but to bring community
pressure to bear and to encourage change within them. It's already been
noted that minority representation within police forces is increasing
everywhere in line with demographic changes and pressure from minority
communities, and the identification of these cops with their communities can
be drawn on in pursuit of reform. The left has appealed along similar lines
to the class identity of worker and peasant soldiers in earlier conflicts,
rather than ostracizing them from society.

It should be unnecessary to add that are working class if you work for wages
or salary and have no effective control over your workplace, whether you
recognize it or not. It neither depends on the level of union or political
consciousness, which is quite uneven across all occupations, or whether the
workers are employed in the equally vast "law enforcement" or "social
service" sectors. There is still a very large and variegated working class
"in itself" in the US and other Western countries, even if - for reasons
which are historical rather than intrinsic - it has long been dormant and
has only acted in a very limited way as a class "for itself".