While there were definitely some lib reformists and opportunists who wanted to water down the police abolition demand, I would argue that calls to "abolish" the police are actually ultraleft and unscientific, because we can't go straight from having police that follow the orders of the capitalist class to not having police when revolution isn't immediately on the table. Any municipalities like Minneapolis who actually "abolish" their PDs are simply going to replace their departments with informal "not-cops" who are functionally identical to cops, because we still exist under conditions where the capitalist dictatorship is unchallenged.
The time to call for actual abolition of the police only comes when the workers actually have their own institutions ready to replace the capitalist state, i.e. when we have workers' councils all over the god damn place ready to step up and actually govern and maintain some semblance of order during a transition to socialism. We don't even have our own mass workers' political party yet. This is why we should be calling to "massively" or "majorly" defund and demilitarize the police (none of these small token budget cuts like the libs are willing to settle for - we should be talking orders of magnitude in the range of 25% or even 50% police budget reductions to fund underfunded social services!), rather than calling to completely abolish the police at this stage.
Addendum: this doesn't mean we shouldn't take a 100% sympathetic approach to the people out on the streets marching or even literally fighting to win police abolition, since replacing the bourgie state with a workers' state is one of the goals of a socialist revolution to begin with. We should make the argument that complete abolition is good and necessary but only possible through socialism, and that we can fight to defund cops in the short term on the way to fighting for that longer-term goal.
yea, agreed. my nit is that we should be recruiting the people on the streets who are willing to fight the cops into a revolutionary party. but it's the anarchists who have built those relationships and consequently garnered that trust. it's one of my frustrations with, for example, PSL. the people who are already willing to stand in front of a police line in front of the white house, facing flashbangs and rubber bullets night after night - those people don't need to be radicalized, only educated on how to effectively channel their anger and actually bring down the state. we only hurt ourselves by ignoring them and PSL's absence in the more radical protests is visible.
as the state can't actually grant either demand - either police abolition or defunding - it's important to remember that these are focal points for agitation, not in themselves constituents of a policy platform put forward by a revolutionary party (which as you note does not yet exist). consequently, the demand in the present (such as that banner can even be taken up, given the patchwork of organizations we currently work through) should take the maximalist position, as espoused by the most radical elements of the class, until such a party forms. demands like these are important in the formation of the party because they focus the grievances of the class and put them ideologically past the bounds of recuperation by liberals and opportunists.
this is actually a really good example of the phenomenon - the call to abolish the police cannot itself be recuperated. it's too plainly obvious to everyone what that means and whether the demand has in fact been met. well, until the capitalists try abolishing the police and replacing them with the same institution under a different name - but the level of organization of the class before such a concession can be forced must be much higher. whereas, in comparison, calls to defund the police have already been recuperated into meaninglessness by city councils around the country. mass demands that resist recuperation in this way are incredibly useful tools for recruitment, education, agitation, and destabilization of the system as a whole.
I can see where you're coming from, but I've already pointed out how calls to abolish the police have already been recuperated in Minneapolis, partly because the local BLM organizers were arguably more politically advanced than many of their counterparts in other large US cities. If the maximalist abolition demand isn't carefully formulated, we can expect to see this outcome replicated elsewhere: the local bourgie government gets rid of their official police department following the letter of the demand but not the intent, replacing their official police department with a more loose/informal sheriff's office or "public safety" institution capable of summoning posses; or we see sudden growth in private security, rent-a-cops, or armed mercenaries/goons like the Pinkertons. Either way we have our "abolition" of the police, but that special body of armed men ready to make workers bleed to defend the capitalist class and their property hasn't actually gone away, it's just changed form into something more opaque and sinister.
I could maybe see the argument for refining the maximalist version of the demand into something like "establish workers' councils to abolish and replace the cops", but the US working class for the most part has almost none of the historical memory or context to understand what the hell that means yet. US workers as a whole are still too immature to actually begin that work, and our immediate task includes laying the foundations to even make that possible. A more carefully formulated version of the defund demand, something to the effect of "reduce [insert city here]'s police budget by 90% to fund social services/public transportation/education/etc., demilitarize the PD, and also don't do this by recategorizing police spending as non-police spending in other budgets", is of course also inevitably going to be bastardized by the liberal city councils but it gives us a more tangible and recognizable transitional goal to organize around, and through that process we attract people to a revolutionary banner and begin building community coalitions which will eventually be developed and disciplined enough to form the basis for a mass workers' party and revolutionary party, and later the workers' councils representing the embryo of the workers' state.
While there were definitely some lib reformists and opportunists who wanted to water down the police abolition demand, I would argue that calls to "abolish" the police are actually ultraleft and unscientific, because we can't go straight from having police that follow the orders of the capitalist class to not having police when revolution isn't immediately on the table. Any municipalities like Minneapolis who actually "abolish" their PDs are simply going to replace their departments with informal "not-cops" who are functionally identical to cops, because we still exist under conditions where the capitalist dictatorship is unchallenged.
The time to call for actual abolition of the police only comes when the workers actually have their own institutions ready to replace the capitalist state, i.e. when we have workers' councils all over the god damn place ready to step up and actually govern and maintain some semblance of order during a transition to socialism. We don't even have our own mass workers' political party yet. This is why we should be calling to "massively" or "majorly" defund and demilitarize the police (none of these small token budget cuts like the libs are willing to settle for - we should be talking orders of magnitude in the range of 25% or even 50% police budget reductions to fund underfunded social services!), rather than calling to completely abolish the police at this stage.
Addendum: this doesn't mean we shouldn't take a 100% sympathetic approach to the people out on the streets marching or even literally fighting to win police abolition, since replacing the bourgie state with a workers' state is one of the goals of a socialist revolution to begin with. We should make the argument that complete abolition is good and necessary but only possible through socialism, and that we can fight to defund cops in the short term on the way to fighting for that longer-term goal.
yea, agreed. my nit is that we should be recruiting the people on the streets who are willing to fight the cops into a revolutionary party. but it's the anarchists who have built those relationships and consequently garnered that trust. it's one of my frustrations with, for example, PSL. the people who are already willing to stand in front of a police line in front of the white house, facing flashbangs and rubber bullets night after night - those people don't need to be radicalized, only educated on how to effectively channel their anger and actually bring down the state. we only hurt ourselves by ignoring them and PSL's absence in the more radical protests is visible.
as the state can't actually grant either demand - either police abolition or defunding - it's important to remember that these are focal points for agitation, not in themselves constituents of a policy platform put forward by a revolutionary party (which as you note does not yet exist). consequently, the demand in the present (such as that banner can even be taken up, given the patchwork of organizations we currently work through) should take the maximalist position, as espoused by the most radical elements of the class, until such a party forms. demands like these are important in the formation of the party because they focus the grievances of the class and put them ideologically past the bounds of recuperation by liberals and opportunists.
this is actually a really good example of the phenomenon - the call to abolish the police cannot itself be recuperated. it's too plainly obvious to everyone what that means and whether the demand has in fact been met. well, until the capitalists try abolishing the police and replacing them with the same institution under a different name - but the level of organization of the class before such a concession can be forced must be much higher. whereas, in comparison, calls to defund the police have already been recuperated into meaninglessness by city councils around the country. mass demands that resist recuperation in this way are incredibly useful tools for recruitment, education, agitation, and destabilization of the system as a whole.
I can see where you're coming from, but I've already pointed out how calls to abolish the police have already been recuperated in Minneapolis, partly because the local BLM organizers were arguably more politically advanced than many of their counterparts in other large US cities. If the maximalist abolition demand isn't carefully formulated, we can expect to see this outcome replicated elsewhere: the local bourgie government gets rid of their official police department following the letter of the demand but not the intent, replacing their official police department with a more loose/informal sheriff's office or "public safety" institution capable of summoning posses; or we see sudden growth in private security, rent-a-cops, or armed mercenaries/goons like the Pinkertons. Either way we have our "abolition" of the police, but that special body of armed men ready to make workers bleed to defend the capitalist class and their property hasn't actually gone away, it's just changed form into something more opaque and sinister.
I could maybe see the argument for refining the maximalist version of the demand into something like "establish workers' councils to abolish and replace the cops", but the US working class for the most part has almost none of the historical memory or context to understand what the hell that means yet. US workers as a whole are still too immature to actually begin that work, and our immediate task includes laying the foundations to even make that possible. A more carefully formulated version of the defund demand, something to the effect of "reduce [insert city here]'s police budget by 90% to fund social services/public transportation/education/etc., demilitarize the PD, and also don't do this by recategorizing police spending as non-police spending in other budgets", is of course also inevitably going to be bastardized by the liberal city councils but it gives us a more tangible and recognizable transitional goal to organize around, and through that process we attract people to a revolutionary banner and begin building community coalitions which will eventually be developed and disciplined enough to form the basis for a mass workers' party and revolutionary party, and later the workers' councils representing the embryo of the workers' state.
responding so I don't forget to reply later when I have time