Can you be anti work and pro police?

 Short answer: of course you can, the two have nothing in common with one another.

Long answer: So I came across this on r/antiwork, and it's like the polar opposite side of the spectrum from the side I normally harp on. While I rip on a lot of people there for not being anti work enough, and do engage in gatekeeping against those who have sentiments like "bro you actually wanna abolish work? what are you crazy? You must just be lazy or stupid", then you get the "leftists" who act like anyone who isn't as Marxist or Marxist-er than they are aren't truly anti work. And that's kind of what I want to get to here.

Anyway, if we want to see their logic, here it is:

The police enforce the power of capitalist, businesses, and bosses, to exploit workers and oppress regular people.

The cops in the U.S. started out as slave catchers (literally kidnapping workers back to plantations).

The cops will arrest a person who steals from stores but NEVER businesses owners who steal workers wages.

The cops literally seize peoples cash and assets extra-judicially and through that are the biggest thieves in the entire u.s.

The police regularly work with bosses to harass and break striking workers.

I'm sorry but if you are pro cop and think you are anti work you're kidding yourself.

 Folks, this is your brain on "leftism." Essentially, leftists want to burn the entire system down, and think anything that upholds the current system like police is the economy. Now, to be fair, I do want to look at both sides of this, because I want to put these comments in an academic context.

In sociology there are three paradigms. Conflict theory, structural functionalism, and symbolic interactionism. The third isn't super relative here as it basically involves society existing as a shared concept of symbols and cultural norms, with the meaning of those norms being inherently subjective, and stuff that makes sense in some cultural framework might not work well with others, and blah blah blah. And while this is relevant to some segments of anthropology in terms of dissecting various societal rituals, I honestly dont believe it's relevant to this debate. So, I want to present both sides of the argument here. The conflict perspective and the functionalist perspective.

Conflict theory essentially IS based on marxism. Conflict theories are theories in which we look at things in terms of who benefits, and we often find that most societal structures benefit the rich. And let's be honest. To some extent are the sentiments above wrong? Not necessarily. I mean, from a conflict perspective, police enforce the societal paradigm that defends the rich and their interests. And in the past police have broken up strikes before, and enforced the law in an anti worker and pro business way. And you even had private police like the pinkertons do stuff like that. So yes, police are upholders of the status quo, with those laws effectively supporting the rich first and foremost. 

But, let's look at it from the functionalist perspective, because I feel like that's relevant here. The functionalist perspective is the belief that social structures exist because they provide some function to society. And police DO serve a function. They uphold the law. They arrest people who break the law. Without police, there is chaos. Anyone would do whatever they wanted and there would be vigilante justice at best, which isn't a good alternative. So...you want police, you need police. And let's be honest, even communist societies have police. If anything in communist societies, the police do their job more ruthlessly than in capitalist societies, because communist societies aren't exactly known for being the libertarian utopias like to act like they are. In communist societies you often have a dictatorship or oligarchy with the police spying on citizens, arresting them for merely having contrary opinions, and often times killing them. I've been reading a lot about communist countries lately. First because I wanted to see what they were actually like, but also because this Russia thing really got us talking about the history of the USSR. And...I've talked to Ukrainians online about their history there. And communism ISN'T a good thing. Russia was never a good guy. Like, they might not be communist any more, but Russia is russia and it's as authoritarian as ever, and if anything it seems to wanna go back to the USSR days. And let's not forget what killed the USSR. Liberalization policies gave the press speech rights, and the people more freedom of movement, and the entire thing collapsed. So yeah. Leftism is just as bad as the worst capitalist countries if not worse when it comes to police. 

But at the same time, all societies need police, to some extent. I mean, we do. We need to enforce law and order. We need to stop people from killing and robbing people. We need to enforce sanctions against people who violate the laws. Honestly, my issue with police is the degree to which they do so, and to some extent, with the laws they enforce. leftists can make good arguments at times against capitalist police. They just have a huge blind spot in their own ideology. And let's be honest, I'm for some level of police reform, especially in light of BLM and how they reacted to protesters in 2020. They're way too militarized and they tend to use their powers a bit broadly and abrasively at times.

Still, let's not act like this problem is unique to capitalist countries. If anything capitalist, democratic countries have it relatively good. We try to at least not be corrupt. We have open conversations about issues. When we went to war in iraq, we let people protest. In Russia right now they're hauling you off to jail merely for expressing ANY opinion at all. I've seen people say they agreed with putin and were still hauled off by two overly militarized police people. 

So let's be honest. Can we always do a better job with ensuring police uphold the law more fairly and not enforce things in a brutal manner? SURE!

Can you be pro cop and anti work? SURE. Because anti work just means that, being anti work. While leftists might try to claim the term, impose a lot of leftist dogma to it, and then act like people who aren't as leftist as them aren't really anti work, they're just ideologues. And honestly, while I can understand not wanting to use police against strikers, that doesnt mean that there is an inherent issue with police. The problem is that they are just being called in to enforce stuff in a bad way. You still need police whether youre anti work or not. Just because you have an issue with OUR police doesnt mean you dont need SOME sort of police force.

Like really. I just felt a need to go into this because it's baffling how crazy leftists are getting these days. They're getting more insane by the day, I swear. 

Now, for my perspective, am I pro police? I mean, from a structural functionalist perspective, sure I have to be. Am I one of those nuts who pushes thin blue line propaganda? NO! Like, I recognize police as serving valid functions but I'm not one of those jingoistic right wing authoritarian bootlickers who tend to fetishize police for existing. By the way, those people only exist IMO because leftists say stupid stuff like "abolish the police". So it ends up becoming a mindless culture war virtue signal where one side wants to apparently get rid of the police and the other side tends to fetishize it, when in reality it's like, freaking chill guys, the police serve a valid function. We can talk about their budgets, the scope of their enforcement power, systemic issues, etc., but let's be honest, the fact that we have so many culture wars between extreme far leftists with polarizing positions and right wingers with the equally polarizing opposite opinion is pretty much half of what's wrong with the country right now. No one is talking properly, no one is making sense, and braindead extremists are pushing insane tribalistic virtue signals with no nuance that don't hold up to scrutiny.

The police are a tool, nothing more. And you can support that tool existing and also support the anti work cause. The two are not inherently in conflict. Maybe when one side is striking and/or rioting and the other side is trying to break up a protest or a crowd they're in direct conflict, but like, there's more to anti work than striking and other leftist means of trying to accomplish goals.

If anything this seems to explain why leftists have so many issues with structures. Because they oppose the system they desire to work outside it, and because they work outside it, they tend to draw the attention of police who then want to stop them for doing whatever shady, potentially unethical or illegal thing they're doing. 

So...maybe the anti police sentiment is really sentiment against being cracked down upon for doing questionable crap? Idk, it's how I see it.

Anyway, I support anti work goals WITHIN the current system, like a UBI or M4A, so I really dont see a conflict here. This just seems to be leftists being leftists again.