Inequality and the Police

If we are to combat police violence, racial or otherwise, we must first begin by understanding it.

Social inequality is a reflection and a product of economic inequality.  Unless we are to wallow in unscientific claptrap about “human nature” and “tribalism,” we must recognize that the essence of social inequality is that it provides a material and ideological structure that permits some to take things by denying them to others.  Racial inequality is a particularly clear example of this.  For anyone who hasn’t read it, I recommend MLK’s speech at the end of the Montgomery to Selma march.  Whatever disagreements I have with King’s pacifism and reformism, he certainly understood the origins of racial oppression, and gave a beautiful and succinct summary beginning in paragraph 9.   I also cannot recommend too highly the book he refers to, The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward.

In order for economic and social inequality to exist, three things are necessary: the first is the production of a surplus; you cannot have an argument about who gets the extra apple until there is an extra apple.  The second is an ideology that accepts inequality as normal, as just part of life–the idea that we live (or could live, or almost live) in a meritocracy is one, a sense of morality accepted from the oppressors through their control of the media and the academy is another.  Any moral code, such as pacifism, that interferes with the fight for equality serves the interests of those who benefit from continued oppression.   Reformist ideology by definition treats the object it intends to reform, capitalism, as permanent, and thus plays its part in accepting inequality is normal.

The third is a means of enforcing the inequality through violence and the threat of violence.  This is, and always has been, exactly the role of the police.  I think, of all the illusions under which many people operate, one of the greatest is that it is possible to fight against police violence without simultaneously fighting for social and economic equality, because violence in defense of  economic inequality is why the police exist.  The fight for social and economic equality is the fight for socialism.

Independence Day

It is Independence Day and the yabuts are out in force. The reactionaries like to set off fireworks and avoid realizing that the system they believe is the be-all and end-all of human achievement arrived by revolution, by mass action of a people fighting against those who thought their system was the be-all and end-all of human achievement. Meanwhile, the pseudo-lefts dominate the discussion where I am listening: Let anyone dare quote “All men are created equal” and out they charge: “Yeah, but what about the native peoples?” “Yeah, but the founding fathers owned slaves and permitted slavery.” “Yeah, but what about women?” they cry.

To me, the statement “All men are created equal” is a promise, a rallying cry, and an inspiration, and what the yabuts prefer not to look at, is that this promise and inspiration did what it was supposed to: it inspired the Abolition movement, the women’s suffrage movement, the labor movement, the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. Over and over, leaders from Frederick Douglass to Lincoln to Eugene Debs to Elizabeth Stanton and Lucretia Mott to Martin Luther King, Jr have referred to this document as an inspiration, as an “unfulfilled promise,” using it as a banner and a sword to further the cause of human equality.

The Declaration of Independence was revolutionary and inspirational at the time it was written, and it is revolutionary and inspirational today. Whatever the yabuts say, the fight for equality is not hindered by an appreciation of those who, earlier, took what steps were available to them, and handed us a torch with which to burn the hands of those who try to lay hold of our revolutionary traditions for the purpose of stopping them.

There is so much more to do in the fight for equality, which now focuses more and more on the inequality between those who must toil in order to live, and those who live on the fruits of others’ toil. To look on the past as if one had achieved such moral perfection as to permit condemnation of the battles others fought does nothing to advance this cause.

Contradictions Inherent in Changing Gun Laws

Gun safety and gun laws in the US are one of the most difficult things to discuss in isolation from other social problems: mass shootings that are the result of combinations of factors such as desperation, anger, inadequate mental health care, living in a country where the government and the police see human life as without value, along with backwardness, intolerance, religious fanaticism, and other signs of a decaying society.  This complexity makes it almost impossible to look at gun issues apart from their interaction with everything else. When we see supposed liberals, who up until a month ago railed against the “terrorist watch” no-fly list as racist, arbitrary, and undemocratic (which it is) now cheering wildly to increase the powers of the list, we can get a hint of how inter-related gun issues are with everything else.

Nevertheless, there are some inherent contradictions in gun issues that are worth pointing out:

The easiest targets for modifying gun laws, ie, banning semi-automatic rifles and improving background checks, will do the least to reduce the actual number of gun deaths.

Requiring demonstrated knowledge of gun safety before owning a firearm will do a great deal to reduce the worst sorts of gun violence, (children getting hold of them, or impulse suicide). But there is an inherent conflict between storing a weapon in such a way that is useful for home defense and one that is safe from children.  The question of home defense is itself contradictory, simply because, while the fear of home invasion is drastically over-stated by those who make money by peddling fear, nevertheless there is some justification for it.

There are ways around the gun-safety vs gun-access conundrum (quick-release lockboxes keyed to a thumbprint, biometric tirggers, &c), but they’re expensive. This gets into areas where things like insurance and bonding, that some have suggested, end up tying the question “may you own a firearm?” to the question, “how much money do you have?” which, for obvious reasons, I am not at all comfortable with.

Most self-defense uses of handguns are never covered by the news, because most of them never involve discharging a weapon, thus it is very hard to get numbers on them.   Part of the reason for this is that the US government won’t permit any of it’s agencies to make such a study.

What might be the biggest contradiction is this: The notion of using personal weapons to defend against a tyrannical government is nonsense, but giving the government authority to prevent personal ownership of weapons is a step toward tyranny.

Other than a complete and drastic restructuring of society, I do not see a way to resolve these contradictions.

Orlando and the Need to Talk About It Anyway

Let’s see if I can manage to say this right.
 
Orlando was a horror. We’re shocked, disgusted, angry. Moreover, many of us believe we understand an important piece of why it happened and what should be done (I’m not pointing fingers, me too), and we don’t agree, and the disagreement gets angry and frustration grows and we just want to scream at our computer WHY DON’T YOU IDIOTS GET IT?
 
Of course that’s what happens. Because it matters.  We’re horrified, and we want it not to happen any more. And it matters. Our usual, general feeling of, “I want to convince you I’m right” is suddenly three octaves higher, because people are dead, and it is so very ugly and wrong and the need to find a solution is suddenly acute. It matters.
 
Yes, now is when it is hard to try to be patient, to try to explain your position, because (if you’re like me) you’re furious and upset, and because the person you’re trying to explain it to (if he or she is like me) is also furious and upset. And you want to say, “I don’t want to talk about this any more.” And, hey, maybe that’s the right call, I’m not saying to force yourself into anything.
 
I will continue trying convince you that I’m right (and you’re wrong) about how to look at this, and I will try my best to be patient and to explain as clearly as I can, and I understand if you get angry and want to shut down the conversation, and maybe I will get angry and try to shut down the conversation. But I’ll remind myself that the reason this is hard to talk about is exactly why it is important we try to do so. Because it matters.

A Response to the Anti-Trump Petition

I’ve received a request to sign this petition of writers against Trump. There can be no question of my opposition to Trump and all he stands for: his appeal to ignorance and bigotry, his threats to carry out war crimes, his efforts to generate hatred of immigrants, his overt jingoism.  I would go so far as to say that Trump is the first major politician of my lifetime who can be accurately characterized as, if not a fascist, certainly fascistic; this becomes more clear as we see him whipping up his supporters to commit acts of violence against those who oppose him.

Nevertheless, I cannot, in good conscience, sign the petition. When I read, “Because we believe that knowledge, experience, flexibility, and historical awareness are indispensable in a leader,” I am forced to ask: a leader of what, leading for what purpose, in whose interest, and in what direction? This indicates to me that the petition is not merely against Trump, but can and will be used to support someone who, to those using the petition, would be a better choice to, “speak for the United States, to lead its military, to maintain its alliances, or to represent its people.”

And here is the problem. When you say, “lead its military…represent its people” this contains an implication that it is possible to do both. In other words, that the Bush-Obama war, with its war crimes and murders of civilians (openly and publicly supported by Senator Sanders, and with which Secretary Clinton has been actively complicit) is the will of the American people, which I cannot and will not accept. In addition, it implies that this war is not the problem, but rather the problem is how it is carried out.

I have only respect for those of my colleagues who are horrified by Trump and what he represents—how can we not be? Furthermore, I am always encouraged by signs that we as writers are aware of and involved with the political questions that matter so deeply to our future. And yet it seems to me that we need to take a closer and more critical look at what is being done here. It is all very well to be “anti-Trump.” But if being anti-Trump means support for the Democratic Party whose administration has overseen, in the last 8 years, more deportations (especially of children) than any other administration in history, has encouraged and justified the murder of the poor and minorities by police, has created the greatest income disparity in history, has continued illegal rendition and torture, has bombed more civilians than Bush dreamed of, has retreated before the religious right’s attacks on freedom at every opportunity, then one must ask: why are we doing this?

There is nothing in the petition that prevents it from being used to rally support for Clinton or Sanders, both of whom are defenders of capitalism. But it is capitalism itself, and its insoluble crisis, that has produced Trump as a staph infection might produce a boil. However painful and unsightly the boil, the problem is the infection.  This petition is part of what seems to be a growing “anti-Trump” movement, and of course, the impulse behind this movement is laudable and healthy. But if it becomes a movement in support of the Democratic Party, and especially of Hillary Clinton who is close to sewing up the nomination, then it is useless at best, and will play into Trump’s “anti-establishment” narrative at worst.

You appeal to me as a writer. Yet isn’t our highest goal as writers to lay bare the contradictions that are concealed within the relations of everyday life? To denounce Trump without also denouncing the other candidates of the capitalist parties—that is, the parties that support wars of aggression, the militarization of the police, domestic spying, persecution of whistle blowers, torture, and war crimes, all of which have been carried out by both major parties, and none of which have been opposed by any major candidate—is not to reveal the truth, but to conceal it.

And to those who insist that some Democratic politician is a “lesser evil” and (as people so often do) bring up Hitler and Nazi-ism, it is worth remembering that Hitler was defeated in the election of 1932 by a coalition organized by those who thought anyone was better than Hitler. The Nazis, in other words, were “lesser eviled” all the way into power. If when someone says Trump you hear Hitler, than when someone says Clinton you ought to hear Hindenberg.

No, I do not support Trump. Nor do I support the imperialist wars, militarized police, domestic spying, movements toward war against Russia, provocations against China, restrictions on reproductive rights, poisoning of water supplies, and attacks on basic rights that are the legacy of the Democratic Party as well as the Republican. Are the two parties different? Certainly. They represent different sections of the ruling class, and different approaches for how best to preserve and defend capitalism, and the very bitterness of the conflict between them indicates how deep runs the crisis, how insoluble are the problems. But I am not interested in picking which candidate will do a better job of preserving the system that is oppressing and murdering my brothers and sisters. If you offer me that as a choice, I vote “no.”

I believe that only the unity of working people, immigrants, the unemployed, the poor, and all of the oppressed, fighting under a socialist program directly against the two parties of big business, can provide any sort of way forward. The candidacy of Donald Trump represents all of the filth, degeneracy, and despair of capitalism in its death agony; the Democratic Party candidates who oppose him represent different policies to accomplish the same goal, and it is the goal itself, continuing the system of war and oppression, that I oppose.

In November, I will be voting for Jerry White and Niles Niemuth of the Socialist Equality Party. I urge everyone who is as appalled as I am by, not only Trump, but by the criminal and inhuman system that produced him, to do the same.